Dialogue, drama, romance, blah, blah OH HEY NEATO MECHANICAL AIRSHIP
These two scenes were damned hard to crank out. We get into the meat of the Penny/Gilbert/Jesse situation, and that’s rough, when G/J are pretty much an unbreakable couple after all they’ve been through. So, the drama comes less from “Oh noes, will they part ways?!” and more from exploring what they are and how they came to be. Hopefully it works. Again, I write romance with almost no practical experience and hope for the best.
No Chloe in these scenes, but she’ll be in the very next one. (And I may do slightly more revision to her earlier scenes. I think an FBI agent, even a consultant, should probably be able to use a handgun and be okay at a practice range. Even if she’s not gonna be going all Frank Castle on anyone during the series.) After that, we’re probably off to the races for the Obligatory Death Defying Action and Tension Segment, followed by Various Revelations About Things We Were Not Aware Of.
I’d like to drop a reminder that the offer to join the team and spread the word is still out there. All you have to do is talk up anachronauts on your blog, your twitter, your facebookings, your forums, or hell, just go tell a friend “there’s this thing you might like reading” and BAMMO, you get some writing from yours truly about your fictional self. Everybody likes writing. At least, I hope you like writing. If you’re reading this out of some sense of monastic self penance, well, hopefully you enjoy it on some other level. So far, we’ve got two entries up on the gallery page. So, hey, read those two, why not. Also: If you did this prior to my offer, it still counts! Just drop me an email according to the instructions on the page, and you’re in!
Feedback is as always welcome.
Stefan "Twoflower" Gagne's Creative Writing Zone 
I heart JesseXGilbert. Of course, this chapter establishes that a divorce between the two would be a messy, impossible matter. I don’t particularly want to see this pairing part anyway. I love them together. I think you outlined the reasons they are together rather well. Jesse is a challenge, after all…
So, I havent finished reading yet, but something is waving little red flags at me and I need to deal with it now.
You are suggesting that the pirates would be conspicuous in England because they are swarthy???.
First, if we’re assuming that Pandora took place right about, oh, now, let me assure you that a reasonably swarthy pirate, shorn of piratical nonsense, would look very, very English indeed. Plus, what gets called “swarthy” in the old books is more like “well tanned,” since a goodly number of pirates were actually Brits. Whereas nowadays it has Definite Racial Overtones that you really, really don’t want to get into. Or if you do, you don’t want to get into it as an aside.
May I suggest “less swashbuckling”? Skin color can’t be changed on a shopping trip, but style can.
And if you really want to get into the whole color thing, might we discuss off-line a wee tad?
I think the sentence structure was that they would be conspicuous posing as noblemen, not just being in England. But I wasn’t aware of that definition for “swarthy”, I was figuring “sweaty, rough and tumble, obviously badass” so I’ll probably change it in the next draft as suggested.
The noble houses of “Britain” are from all over Europe, and England itself was very mixed race pre-Pandora. So, race and cultural background (such as Baron von Blerg of Norway, heir to a furniture empire) are plenty mixed as well. In the Empire, nobility has less to do with purity of bloodline and more to do with purity of bank account.
Whew. Color me relieved.
Pun intended? :D
Huh, 2f isn’t the only one who didn’t get that the primary definition of swarthy is just about skin color. I never looked it up before. I feel educated now.
Come to think of it, us being siblings and all, maybe that’s why we both missed the real context somehow. Like maybe we both have used it wrong but consistently. … Anyway!
But of course!
Great section, 2F. It doesn’t _look_ like it was a struggle to work out how you were going to handle the PGJ continuum, which means you succeeded, since clearly it was a toughie!
I think it works romance-wise. Sometimes people DO have actual conversations and cut these things off at the pass, as you’ve written, as opposed to the standard anime-style tropes. ;) Yet at the same time I can still see Jesse/Penny facing off at the docks like that, esp. with Penny goading and Jesse having already predicted it.
Can’t wait to see how Benny and Chloe get kitted out. :D This screams for fanart… curse my non-practiced hands!
And not to beat a dead horse of any color, but the three of us dicussing this here are all white and thus, as members of the majority culture, might assume that “swarthy pirate” was describing some aspect of piracy rather than of color. However, I read a lot of old fiction, in which “swarthy” is often a code-word for “of another race”.
In fact, I once read one such book from cover to cover without realizing that a major, MAJOR character, referred to as a “boy” throughout the book was actually an adult African-American man. Sigh.
Ohhhh, white people.
I’d like to get a cast picture for each of the series, really. The LF one would definitely have their disguises. I gotta find an artist who’s interested and can take the commissions.
Would Benny really need one, considering he’s already had Dealings in Britannia? He might already have a local outfit, assuming he ever bothers doing that.
OTOH if the point is for him to NOT be recognized as the notorious Benny the Broker, that’s different…
I’ll be addressing Benny’s clothing situation in the next scene.
TRANSFORMING AIRSHIP. Massive fangirl squee!
Also, yay for Gilbert, Jesse, and Penny talking it out like (Mostly) Reasonable People. I like not having wacky anime-style hijink misunderstandings. They’re all adults. They should act like it.
Finally, I am now picturing Jesse dressed like Dahlia Hawthorne from the Phoenix Wright series, and let me tell you, that’s downright scary.
Honestly, if I did go for the Obligatory And Annoying Misunderstanding Hijinks, it’d be a considerable stretch. I was originally planning for that, but when it came time to write it, it just felt WRONG. I had to have them be sensible because they are sensible people. (Yes, even Jesse.) The only one who had possibility of being irrational is Penny and I wanted her to ultimately be kinda likeable.
As for Dahlia… heh. Probably very similar, indeed. :D